Jayapal Statement on GOP’s Partisan ICE Resolution

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal released the following statement on the passage of the GOP’s politically-driven resolution concerning Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE):

“It’s outrageous that it takes a sham resolution like this one to even have a floor discussion about family separation. It’s outrageous that the GOP is putting forward a do-nothing resolution instead of any real solutions to the fact that the Trump administration is putting kids in cages and parents seeking asylum in prison. It is outrageous that this administration has missed every court-ordered deadline to reunite families. H. Res 990 was nothing more than a political stunt and I refused to engage with it. That’s why I and the majority of the Democratic caucus voted ‘present.’ This resolution is a sham and it simply doesn’t deserve a yes or no vote.

“What does deserve our attention is reigning in the unchecked power of ICE, but every time we bring up real solutions, we are ignored by this administration and the Republican Party.

“Just this morning—in a meeting with officials from DHS, HHS, DOJ and a bipartisan group of Judiciary Committee members—we were fed more lines about how Trump’s administration is working on the family separation crisis they created in the first place. No matter what this administration and its GOP cronies say, we know the truth: Trump ripped families apart at the border, immigration officials have torn breastfeeding babies away from their mothers, kids have been so shell-shocked by family separation that they no longer recognize their parents. The trauma these families have witnessed is a direct result of Trump’s zero-tolerance, zero-humanity policy.

“Congress should be debating and fixing those policies instead of putting forward a ridiculous, do-nothing political resolution. Republicans have made clear that they’re not willing to do the work to fix our badly broken immigration system, but we will keep fighting. We need open hearings with Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to address the abuses of our immigration system. We need to work tirelessly to reunite the nearly 3,000 children who are still separated from their families. We need to ensure border patrol isn’t blocking asylum seekers from reaching safety. We need to make our immigration agencies transparent and humane, and we need to do these things immediately. I urge my colleagues across the aisle to put their attention on real issues instead of continuing to play games with children’s lives.”